First and foremost, before the usual argument happens, I know that more is not necessarily better.
Having said that, it would be better if lemmy’s userbase were much bigger. There are many, many, interesting communities that are basically dead. We need a bigger userbase to drive some content to those communities.
If person A wants to discuss topic X, but there are barely any people with whom to discuss topic X, person A will go back to the usual for-profit corporations to do just that. This is obviously not good, for obvious reasons: just look around.
And an equally important point: for profit services, such as reddit, need to die. The userbase create the content and a select few get rich from it? Fuck them.
So the question is:
- In your opinion, what can we do to increase the userbase?
I mean for me it was a recent decision to delete for-profit and algorithmic social media. But that was internally driven as I realised they were making me more miserable and I couldn’t stomach the advertising anymore. But I’ve always failed to replicate that feeling in other people who are stuck in a mixture of sunk cost fallacy and boiled frog status, no idea how to do it consistently.
Outside of get-popular-quick schemes:
Volunteer your time and expertise to make Lemmy better. Whether it’s sharing secret recipes for free, or helping out newer users, all users need to contribute to make it a better place that people want to use.
The main hurdle is onboarding. Normal people wont understand federation. All they know is Login with Google, that’s it.
hola, trataré de mencionar algo que me parece no sale o no se ve mucho como debate,
soy un usuario que leer bastante lemmy por varias razones, novedades, noticias, comentarios, revelaciones…
en mi caso particular pues por no conocer mucho ni poco el idioma inglés pues acudo constantemente al traductor incorporado de firefox, y con calma pues voy seleccionando hilos, debates y respuestas que bien interesan,cuando se comenzó a gestar la expansión de lemmy hice la tecnica de responder en ambos idiomas, en original español y el bloque traducido en inglés,
¿es un problema que todo lemmy o mayormente sea solo en inglés? pues es un eterno debate complejo, si y no, en el caso de español por ahora instancias de lemmy son muy contadas, muy pocas y ya casi sin participación o seguimiento, ya ni menciono otros idiomas locales o regionales pero igualmente importantes como el catalán,
por eso ando en la duda que el idioma de acceso o la poca o nula facilidad de traducir hace o puede hacer que lemmy no se expanda mas, solo algunas apps externas y accesibles de android hacen posible la traducción con pulsar un botón, pero si me preocupa un poco “mucho” que este detalle de lengua está ahora “bloqueando” a muchos o miles y miles de usuarios que les gustaría participar, escribir, responder y ampliar el tema de cualquier naturaleza.
Hi, I’ll try to bring up something that I don’t think gets discussed much.
I’m a user who reads Lemmy quite a bit for several reasons: updates, news, comments, revelations…
In my case, since I don’t know much English, I constantly use Firefox’s built-in translator, and I carefully select threads, discussions, and replies that are of interest.When the Lemmy expansion started, I used the technique of replying in both languages: the original Spanish and the translated section in English.
Is it a problem that all or most of Lemmy is only in English? Well, it’s a complex, eternal debate—yes and no. In the case of Spanish, for now, instances of Lemmy are very few and far between, with almost no participation or follow-up. I won’t even mention other local or regional languages, which are equally important, like Catalan.
That’s why I’m wondering if the access language or the limited or nonexistent ease of translation is preventing Lemmy from expanding further. Only a few external and accessible Android apps allow translation with the touch of a button, but I’m quite concerned that this language issue is currently blocking many, or even thousands, of users who would like to participate, write, respond, and expand on the topic in any way.
I think the most valuable thing we can do for the fediverse is to contibute by posting in communities we care about, thus helping them be active, and engage in posts made by others in general. In short, don’t lurk, don’t be passive.
I think the most valuable thing we can do for the fediverse is to contibute by posting in communities we care about
I saw this same thought posted about 2 weeks ago and it made me realise I posted lfew replies and scrolled a lot. That person suggested if people see a post with zero responses they likely scroll past (myslef included) but even if the post has 2 or 3 responses, people will be more likely to perhaps engage
I now respond more, even if like this response, it’s just a +1 type response.
Can we pool some money together and advertise somewhere or put stickers at coffee shops in big cities. Some of my other thoughts are to have influencers plug it, put adds on blogs especially hobby blogs and niche blogs if that’s who we’re trying to attract.
This would not be such a bad idea, honestly. Or just some small stickers that people place on their laptops.
However, I feel like we should see who comes on top, lemmy or PieFed. I feel like piefed might be our best option tbh. The lemmy devs don’t seem to be open to ideas, not to mention their whole stance on politics.
Bring it up at your local town hall; be sincere about what Lemmy is. Ask if there are any Reddit users then publicly shame them for using the platform.
cultivate the niche hobby subs, thats really all that reddit still has going for it because it reached critical mass.
Honestly, not just the niche hobbies. We have no real community here that the masses can enjoy. I can’t give a good nfl instance, NBA instance, etc. Most of the shit presented to me is autistic blah. While it’s entertaining for a minute it’s not something that I need to see all the time, and it’s the biggest amount of posts I see. I’m about to go over to digg for a while because there isn’t much here.
Yes. That is one of the things that keeps people coming back. I have been doing stupid stuff with Linux and posting it here hoping people will join and push it further.
has to start somewhere, makes one wonder how reddit caught on enough to become established.
iirc StumbleUpon took me to reddit for the first time, not really organic website discovery services now.
waiting for more reddit purges? thats sadly is the only way. other ways, reddit just have all the communities that lemmy doesnt.
currently reddit is very careful about massive purges now, they are just doing background ones, even if they increased thier filtering and sensitivity of bot? detection. they want to avoid bots being to pervasive on site to make it seem like its mostly users.
Trying to convince people I know to join the Fediverse is like, well, it’s a lot like trying to convince people to switch to Linux. They’re not gonna do it and I’ll look like a jackass if I talk about it too much.
If there was an easy way to grow this platform overnight, we’d be doing it. Reality is there’s no shortcut, all we can do is continue building community with the people who are here and hope that we see some slow and steady incremental growth.
If I want to read discussion about a new movie or game that all seems to be on reddit, so I guess the lesson is to try starting that sort of thing here and hope it picks up. With a smaller user base you have to accept that individual posts may not get any traction though. I do think having discussion other than Linux and whatever Trump is going on about this week would help to grow the platform.
Start posting!
Ive been posting way more here than I ever did at reddit, and mods dont delete my posts randomly or out of spite.
Honestly variety is the spice of life, and keeping up with the zeitgeist is half of why people like to be online. I think this is a very good point!
you can link to posts and comments here on other platforms if they are interesting or funny or cool
you can also post your dingus on the NSFW one
Leak the funhole.
Stay upprayed fam.
Thank you for sharing your leaky hole content.
Mention and link to it on Reddit when it is especially relevant
We don’t need more usebase, we’ve got perfectly good userbase at home.
Honestly it’s a double edged sword. The tight-knit feel of Lemmy is really cozy, but with a larger user base it will allow for more posts/interaction on niche communities.
